BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Continuing storms successful eastbound Spain that led to massive flooding past week and killed astatine slightest 217 people, mostly adjacent Valencia, dumped rainfall connected Barcelona connected Monday, prompting authorities to suspend commuter obstruction service.
Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said he was suspending each commuter trains successful northeast Catalonia, a region pinch 8 cardinal people, astatine nan petition of civilian protection officials.
Mobile phones successful Barcelona screeched pinch an alert for “extreme and continued rainfall” connected nan confederate outskirts of nan city. The alert urged group to debar immoderate usually barren gorges aliases canals.
Puente said nan rains had forced aerial postulation controllers to alteration nan people of 15 flights operating astatine Barcelona’s airport, located connected nan confederate flank of nan city.
Several highways person been closed owed to flooding.
Classes were cancelled successful Tarragona, a metropolis successful confederate Catalonia astir halfway betwixt Barcelona and Valencia, aft a reddish alert for rains was issued.
Meanwhile, successful Valencia, nan hunt continued for bodies wrong houses and thousands of wrecked cars strewn successful nan streets, connected highways, and successful canals that channeled past week’s floods into populated areas.
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that authorities tin still not springiness a reliable estimate of nan missing. Spanish nationalist tv RTVE, however, has broadcast pleas for thief by respective hopeless group whose loved ones are unaccounted for.
In nan Aldaia municipality, immoderate 50 soldiers, constabulary and firefighters, immoderate wearing wetsuits, searched successful a immense shopping center’s underground parking batch for imaginable victims. They utilized a mini vessel and spotlights to move astir successful nan immense building pinch vehicles submerged successful astatine slightest a metre of murky water.
Police spokesperson Ricardo Gutiérrez told reporters that truthful acold immoderate 50 vehicles had been recovered and nary bodies had been discovered there.
The Bonaire shopping mall’s 1,800 underground parking spaces quickly filled pinch h2o and mud connected Tuesday and Wednesday erstwhile nan confederate outskirts of Valencia were deed by a tsunami-like flooding. The squad is utilizing 4 pumps to region nan water.
Citizens, volunteers and thousands of soldiers and constabulary officers pressed connected pinch their gargantuan clean-up effort to clear retired mud and debris.
Many group consciousness abandoned by authorities, their anger erupting connected Sunday erstwhile a crowd tossed mud astatine Spain’s royal couple, nan premier minister and location leaders arsenic they made their first sojourn to Paiporta, wherever complete 60 group died and nan survivors person mislaid their homes and still don’t person drinking water.
Spain is utilized to autumn storms that tin lead to flooding, but nan latest ones person produced nan deadliest flooding successful surviving representation for Spaniards.
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Climate scientists and meteorologists opportunity the contiguous origin of nan flooding was a cut-off lower-pressure large wind strategy that migrated from an unusually wavy and stalled pitchy stream. It was apt fueled by a record-hot Mediterranean Sea. That strategy simply parked itself complete nan region and unleashed a deluge.
The Spanish navy’s “Galicia” carrier alloy arrived successful Valencia’s larboard connected Monday pinch marines, helicopters and trucks loaded pinch nutrient and h2o to thief pinch nan alleviation effort, which included 7,500 soldiers and thousands of constabulary reinforcements.